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Month: May 2017

I wrote a few days ago that Aussie tennis great Margaret Court can hold any view she likes on same sex marriage but should refrain from publicly boycotting Qantas. Now the outrage brigade is reaching the tennis players who now wish to debate whether to boycott the tennis arena that bears her name at the next Australian Open. Since when is it the players who feel the need to enforce same sex marriage views? Margaret Court was a superb tennis player in her own right which is why she had an arena named after her. Isn’t that the same sort of bigoted mindset to demand the arena is renamed? She doesn’t share their views so they’ll go out of their way to destroy her. What if Margaret Court had a dinner with Andy Murray where she expressed those views in private? Would he have gone to the same lengths? Probably not.

Why wasn’t Boris Becker banned from commentating for supposedly impregnating a waitress in a London restaurant? Where is the outage over his (supposed) lack of respect for women?

Or why aren’t kids trigger-warned over John McEnroe commentating because of his on court antics as a bad role model for children?

Or Nick Kyrgios? How come the players aren’t all over attacking him publicly and demanding he be barred from the game?

Perhaps the tennis association should form a sports player union and advise the golf player association to ban Tiger Woods for life for DUI and for his 19 prostitutes.

Maybe Andy Murray will get a sponsorship from Qantas with his virtue signaling?

No matter how much one might hate President Trump if this is the depth the left is prepared to dive is it really an alternative you’d want to vote for? Can you imagine the 24-7 media coverage if Obama, Hillary Clinton or any other pet favourite was subject to a televised decapitation.The outrage would be non stop. To call the President stupid is one thing but to act in such a manner is beyond lacking intelligence. Is this the way we treat democratically elected leaders we don’t like? Try an election. Ink is less messy than blood.

The table above highlights the betting odds from Paddy Power on the upcoming UK election. It has May & the Conservatives comfortable winners. I wonder how much influence the early Hillary Clinton pay out has been on Paddy Power’s stance on June 8th? Looking at Twitter, Theresa May has had a surge of around 220,000 followers since she called the election and Corbyn around 350,000. Having said that as a percentage May’s has more than doubled vs Corbyn’s 50% hike. That is to say Corbyn had more followers to begin with and May was never really an active social media baroness. I personally think this election will be closer than many think. With 1 million signing up since the election was called this vote will also be a quasi- Brexit referendum Mk.II. The Tories have made a Horlicks of the manifesto and it smacked of over confidence in the lead it held over Labour at the time the election was called. The gap narrows. As awful as Corbyn and co are, the Tories have not exactly looked like the championship winning team it thought it was. It could be that the Tories just win in the PK shoot out as long as Boris isn’t in goal.

Begging for support is no longer working as hoped it would seem. Although condescending its audience would. The Guardian is now quoting the generosity of souls to help ‘secure its future’. Thomasine F-R would have us believe that no paywall is [somehow] democratic. Isn’t it democratic to allow people to choose what they want to read? In fact if there were fewer of the ride but not pay brigade among its readers Thomasine wouldn’t need to virtue signal her compassion. Secretly I’m sure she prefers it this way because all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others. She got the ‘commodity’ bit spot on. There is no real differentiation to attract the masses. People can stream or listen to the BBC to get Guardian-esque left wing bias for free. Does the public require two such offerings? With any luck if Corbyn wins he might nationalise the newspaper alongside utilities, mail and rail.

These days it would seem that most reading starts and ends with the clickbait title. 99% of the Likes and Shares are based on pre-formed bias. Just read the comments to most social media posts and it is easy to see how little time is spent on absorbing content. It is the equivalent of digital Chinese whispers. Still so much of the media can’t escape self-praise. The construction of narratives in an echo-chamber about ‘their opinion matters’ is the problem. Indeed it should limit the number of articles under the paywall and see how many line up to pay for the privilege of accessing such journalistic brilliance or whether they ration the monthly morsels.

Shame on Murdoch for not allowing his subscribers to appeal to readers about how their wealth is what keeps the plebs from accessing the content for free.

Burn this image in your head first. It is Tokyo today. As you can see for such an evil carbon emitting industrialized nation as Japan the skies are blue as any you’d find in Australia. Ironically Japan is a country often selected as a country that must pay into the climate change pot for its sins rather than get a pat on the back for its ability to be clean and productive. So it was no surprise that once again I read the bias in the press reporting from the G-7. Because Trump is a climate sceptic and disagrees with the other 6, articles tried to use this as a reason to beat up on those who won’t bend to the will of the alarmists because he is in their view – an idiot. The inference is that all climate skeptics must be fools by association. Exactly the same garbage at the time of Brexit. A table circulating with Trump, Farage, Putin and other ‘undesirables’ supporting Leave and Obama, EU officials and bodies like the NUS and Greenpeace backing Remain. Then we get the result of the referendum.

I will openly admit that the President has many flaws but to use this as a basis of driving the climate change agenda is pathetic. One article blathered on about his lies (hardly news) and then made the reference to “universally accepted science” which is a huge porky in itself. It isn’t settled. One of the reasons it isn’t settled is down to the data manipulation, amateur hour ethics of bodies like the UNIPCC, NOAA and numerous universities with agenda driven studies numerous of which numerous have been exposed for fraud. Climate alarmism is nothing more than wealth redistribution as the above picture highlights.

If indeed it is universally accepted why bother investing billions of side-by-side research papers to formulate the same outcome? What we have is the construction of multiple rail lines built next to each other operating each at 10% capacity. It is such inefficient capital allocation. Why do we need 50,000 climate disciples flying annually to mega junket tourist locations all to kneel at the altar of the COP summits. This could be delegated to 1% of that number. It shows at the very least that the disciples are the biggest hypocrites. If the science is so settled and everyone is so universally on board as they claim then there is no need to keep twisting the truth to squeeze more funds to prove what we already (supposedly all) agree on.

Seeing Merkel make an argument about 6 countries in favour of following through with the Paris Agreement and America against is laughable. Is America, or at the very least its President required to follow consensus for the sake of group think? Is global politics now reduced to going with the flow? Should dissenting opinions be treated like conservative speakers at universities? This is exactly why it is so hard to respect the current crop of global leaders. One seriously doubts that they truly believe it outside of it being an agenda item to secure votes. Climate alarmism is the socialism of the 21st century.

So perhaps the ‘idiots’ are the ones that can’t escape the pre-formed bias against America’s Commander-in-Chief. Talking about German car imports (when many BMWs and Benz’s are built in the USA) and other gaffes don’t really do him favours but if the media wants to take the moral high ground at the very least they can balance the views on the climate debate (and others) and admit the multiple self-inflicted wounds and inaccuracy of decades of forecasting models where 98% have proven wildly off target. It reminds me of compliance seminars in my old industry. We’d fly in compliance officers to train us about the penalties and Big Brother! We’d focus on the evils of all our competitors and the punishment meted out to them. I asked a simple question – “why don’t we use compliance breach examples from our own company and the manner in which we dealt with it as a matter of getting people aware of being a responsible corporate? Can we honestly say farts don’t smell?” It sums up the climate alarmists perfectly. Everyone else is at fault and everything we do is virtuous, honest and worthy of self-praise.

I get where crowd funding the plight of some poor starving tribe in Africa hit by a devastating famine, or a Bangladeshi child who needs emergency surgery to save her might have merit but to dig deep for Katie Hopkins takes some convincing. Her ‘final solution’ comments in the wake of the Manchester bombing got her fired from LBC. I’m not here to debate the radio station’s internal staff policies or how they execute them. Katie’s views are always strong, especially with regards to radical Islamic terrorism. I actually thought Janet Albrechtson’s article in the Weekend Australian was a far more eloquent summation of how to put a case forward to fix the problem.

Katie chose her words poorly (even if deliberately) and even if she expresses her views under the banner of ‘free speech’ she has to accept the consequences of those actions of the sponsor that pays her wages. In a sense LBC has the right (mostly for concerns to its advertisers) to make a call on that. Just like those US government agencies who were told to cease criticizing their President-elect on taxpayer funded websites. It was not a ban on free speech but a question of insubordination. To those that couldn’t see that view I suggested they send a message to their boss with the rest of the company CC’d about how stupid you thought he was. The LBC decision stands.

Still one has to wonder why there is a need to crowd fund Katie? Surely she will resurface again. I am surprised Breitbart hasn’t posted an applicaton form to join. Her darkest hour? Are they serious? I am sure she has had many darker. Though who is it for me to determine who wishes to give her money? After all it is charitable. I wonder though whether the tax authorities must have a good, hard look at such crowdfunding and deem whether there is a legitimate tax deductibility case to be had…

Having said that, what a sign of the times that crowd funding tells us about how deeply certain issues affect others. The flip side is they only think she is worth 100,000 pounds. If I ever get crowdfunded I can only hope the figure is far higher.

While social media splashes around a US contribution to total NATO spend of 73% it in reality is a third of that. Only the USA and UK spend over and above NATO commitments as outlined in the chart above. Even the Greeks meet half the requirement! Germany is below not only NATO guidelines but the media would never tell you that. Trump has a point. In fact the reason much of the military spending numbers below the requirement stems more from inefficiency than anything else.

What many fail to understand is that salaries and benefits (housing, education and healthcare) for military staff tend to consume 3/4s of the budget. Procurement is a dog’s breakfast and influenced by age of fleets, battalions, interoperability and so forth. While NATO isn’t exactly group buy the us wins by default of having access to the best cost/performance equipment allowing better bang for the buck. Little Estonia can’t get the same economies of scale.

The “contribution” (click here) question is clouded by two things. Under Obama, the US has cut its NATO contribution from 5.29% of GDP when he took office to 3.6%. NATO Europe had met the minimum expected contribution of 2% but this has slumped from the tech bubble collapse of 2000 to 1.47% today which has meant the only thing keeping NATO’s overall budget above target has been Uncle Sam!

So once again social media muddles a message. It takes 10 seconds to go on NATO’s website and fact check.

Instead the media is more focused on pointless clickbait on whether Trump can hold Melania’s hand without being swatted away or who won the vigorous handshake contest – he or Macron. In fact Macron’s deliberate snub Of Trump when he met all the leaders spoke volumes. He made no conscious effort to shake his hand first. He made a point of sucking up to his EU cronies first and spent needless time making worthless chitchat before even acknowledging the leader of the strongest nation on earth. We shouldn’t be surprised. Best have Trump inside the tent p1ssing out than outside p1ssing in.

Even if they want to delegitimize Trump they play a silly game. Much like business leaders being bullied on social media to leave Trump’s business council (Uber chickened out), the EU plays a dangerous game of isolating Trump. If they want to prevent him from being the “unhinged” orange buffoon they think he is they’d do much better to be welcoming, accommodating and flattering his eminence. That way they can bring balance and find common ground. They show no signs of even beginning to try. By snubbing him they shouldn’t be surprised if he acts independently. Yet Macron acts no better than Trump and the media lavishes praise on the exact same antics they crucify The Donald over. Typical double standards.

Be careful what you wish for! The world needs a healthy US and stunts like this only fray the lines of trust and partnership further. Sure, the America First policy stance is affronting but if the EU want to expedite the process then keep up the Trump bashing. It doesn’t mean Trump bumping (hey Trudeau did it in Canada to a female member of parliament) other dignitaries shows good character but he knows he’s being ridiculed and the media sees it as their only form of attack. The problem is they forget 75% of Republicans STILL approve of his job performance. He may only be doing a C+ on performance in office but he isn’t anywhere near the F- portrayed by the media.